Communities

Kalihi, a multi-ethnic, working-class district
located west of downtown Honolulu, once served as home and work place for
many of O‘ahu’s people.

In the early years of the 1900s, Kalihi, then a residential district
of middle- and upper-class Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians, attracted Chinese
and Portuguese residents. As Japanese, Puerto Rican, and other sugar
workers left the plantations, many of them settled in Kalihi. In the
decades to come, Filipinos, Samoans, Koreans, and Southeast Asians followed.

Cannery workers, dairy workers, farmers, schoolteachers, storekeepers,
and others all lived and worked in Kalihi.

“As I went to grammar school at Kalihi Kai School,
all our brothers and sisters used to help. . . . We help
at the store in the morning, . . . and when we came back
for lunch, we help. . . . After we come back from school,
we help them in the store again.” —Frankie Kam

Beginning in the 1920s and 1930s, these residents were joined by others.
Attracted by affordable housing and Kalihi’s proximity to Downtown
Honolulu and U.S. military bases, many rented or purchased homes and commuted
to work outside of Kalihi.

“Yeah, I was a longshoreman. . . .
When I came from Hilo, I went to McCabe, Hamilton & Renny. Then when this
Castle & Cooke, they needed some longshoremen, they borrow from McCabe.
So I transferred to Castle & Cooke. Then, when Castle & Cooke, they kinda
slack, McCabe call us back.” —Sabas Jamito

“When I went in the (Pearl Harbor Navy) Shipyard,
the first three years I went as a laborer. But then I say, “Well,
I’m not going to be a laborer here all my life. I’m going
to try get something better.” Which I did. . . .
Then I learned a lot more.” —John Vegas

They, together with longtime residents, further developed residential
neighborhoods with churches, community organizations, schools, and youth
activities.

“The Lady of the Mount Church, yeah, we used
to have a big doing over there. Yeah, we used to have, that’s the
patron saint . . . and they used to have a novena . . .
You used to go pray the rosary in church, and . . . they
used to make this sticks of dynamite . . . then they used
to light and throw . . . for nine days before the regular
date, the fifteenth of August.” —Gussie Ornellas

“. . . in 1944, we captured the
league title in 130-pound (barefoot) football league. We defeated the
Diamond Packers which were the champs for three years. For five consecutive
years, we took the champ. . . . I figure, well, here’s
part of history because from now on I don’t think we’ll have
any barefoot football league . . .” —Tokio
Okudara

Today, Kalihi still serves as home to Hawai‘is workers and
their children — many of whom are recent immigrants from the Pacific,
the Philippines, and Southeast Asia. The newer residents now occupy rebuilt
older homes, and new single- and multi-family dwellings.

“There’s no empty space in Kalihi anymore,
except a few parks maybe, school grounds. Used to be vegetable gardens,
flower gardens, taro patches, grazing land, chicken farms. Not anymore.
Even the hillsides are covered now with homes. But it used to be a quiet,
really quiet, open area. You could walk to anyplace you wanted to go.
No place was too far to walk, that is, within Kalihi. But today, well,
it’s just grown that’s all.” —Adolph “Duffie”
Mendonca